No. 1 creepy travel trend: Sending a stuffed toy on vacation

Lucas Aykroyd01.22.2015

What do you do if you just can't get away for a vacation? A Japanese company called Sudachi Travel is offering customers a chance to send their favourite stuffed animals instead. The service caters to seniors, disabled people, and workaholics, who get real-time Facebook photos of their toys posing everywhere from Buddhist temples to high-speed boat tours.

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What do you do if you just can’t get away for a vacation? A Japanese company called Sudachi Travel is offering customers a chance to send their favourite stuffed animals instead. The service caters to seniors, disabled people, and workaholics, who get real-time Facebook photos of their toys posing everywhere from Buddhist temples to high-speed boat tours. They also receive postcards from the various attractions. Some 40 toy tours have taken place since the service launched last March. It’s all fun and games till some teddy bear pees on a national monument.

China wants fools to play it cool

Incidents involving air rage, spitting, and graffiti have sullied the good name of Chinese tourists in recent months. So China’s National Tourism Administration is about to start a program that tracks tourist misbehaviour. Reports on offenders will be passed on to travel companies, which can then decide whether or not to let certain customers buy tickets or take tours. The program will also document how satisfactorily different suppliers deal with complaints. It evokes Mao’s famous words: “Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

Fake caves don’t draw raves

Two years ago, the Indian state of Maharashtra built replicas of the famous caves at Ajanta and Ellora, but it hasn’t worked out as planned. Ajanta is renowned for ancient Buddhist paintings, while Ellora brims with Hindu sculptures. The idea behind creating the replicas — at a cost of about $24 million — was to reduce crowding at the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However, the real sites still get thousands of visitors daily, while fewer than 100 go to the fake caves. Some observers claim the replicas look ugly, are located too close to the originals, and could easily catch fire. Yeah, well, who died and made them the cave kings?

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No. 1 creepy travel trend: Sending a stuffed toy on vacation

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